Off the Shelf

I realized something after reading some of the blogs from others in my class. My blog posts are really super long. I'll try to cut down to make them more readable. 

I have a bone to pick with John Green. He's the wonderful writer of one of my favorite books, Looking for Alaska, he is the wisdom bearing occasional speaker/writer on NPR's All Things Considered, and has borne many other fruits like Paper Towns, the Fault in Our Stars, and An Abundance of Katherines. I've read Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, and the beginning of An Abundance of Katherines, so therefore I shall proclaim myself somewhat of an expert on John Green novels.

He's a great writer, his books filled with emotion and heart, but there are some issues I have with his books that I simply cannot ignore. This ranting list has been brought on by An Abundance of Katherines. I picked up the book the other day and I only made it to chapter four. I couldn't handle it; so begins the formation of a mental list of problems I have with John Green. This is the Jenny Craig version.

Here we go:

1. Predictability. I feel like Green has dug himself into a deep hole of typecasts. In the three books I've read, the protagonist has been a wimpy, overly intelligent teenage boy who is infatuated with an unattainable and overly glorified girl. They have an unrealistic, whirl-wind romance and it doesn't work. It never works.
Why doesn't it work?
Because a man is writing the story and to avoid being overly maudlin he opts out and tries to be "realistic" for the first time in the book.... What? Green leads you to believe that love is wonderful and good and then he slaps it in your face yelling "PSYCH! PLOT TWIST! BET YA DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING!" What he doesn't know is that we did see it coming, we saw it from across the Barnes and Noble before we even picked up the book. 

2. The women. Green's perception of the teenage girl/young woman really irks me. They're written as elusive, impossible, fiercely independent and honestly, borderline psychotic. They're so self destructive. I don't know if John has been in some destructive relationships or if that's how men perceive women, but that is wrong on so many levels. Never have I ever met a girl like the girls in a John Green novel.
The women are so crazy that they're almost the antagonists. I take that back, they are the antagonists. They're traps, illusions, mirages, here to save these nerdy boys from their sad, sad lives, but a boy like that could never possibly please a girl that high maintenance so they're left high and dry, whining until Green puts them out of their misery. Leading me to my third and final point...

3. The whining. I have never read a book with more whining. It's ridiculous. The wimps whine about the wonderfully whimsical and waggish women who win them over wholeheartedly, while waging war on their wholesome, white-bread waking life. With a wink. I had to add the wink part in, if there were to be one action to describe the women in these books it would be wink. You just need to read them, then you would know what I'm talking about.
The boys complain about everything, their bodies, their intelligence, their friends, their (generally) non-existent love lives... etc. The list goes on forever. This is why I stopped reading An Abundance of Katherines; I couldn't handle the whining.

I love John Green, I really do, but even the best have faults in their stars (so punny, knee slapper.) And honestly, I think it might be partially my fault. Maybe I expect too much, maybe I like female protagonists more, or maybe I'm like the girls in the story (I REALLY hope I'm not though) and I can't judge it correctly. Whatever the reason, it doesn't matter. I'll continue to read his books in hope that they'll break out of the matrix, take the blue pill or would taking the red one be more appropriate in this situation? Whatever. You get the gist.

This didn't really end up being short... Sorry. What can I say, I'm a maverick when it comes to rants.